Knightskye
02-24-2010, 02:31 AM
http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidHarsanyi/2010/02/24/the_ron_paul_delusion
Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor -- and I can't stress this enough -- a serious thinker).
I'm not sure what a "serious politician" is. But not a "serious thinker"?
What does Harsanyi think of this video?
YouTube - The Philosophy of Liberty (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I)
Libertarianism offers conservatives -- many of them new to political activism -- an earnest ideological alternative to the process-heavy politics that dominate Washington.
No, it offers them a way to raise some serious campaign cash and get re-elected.
If only it stopped there. Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades. Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.
(Un)fortunately, Harsanyi doesn't go into depth about his monetary policy complaint.
Also, he apparently hasn't seen Paul's CPAC speech this year, where he showed many examples of the traditional conservative foreign policy.
Although he writes for Reason.com (as a contributor, not a staffer), I guess he hasn't read the article about the newsletters:
http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter
Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
That was in the first paragraph.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including "End the Fed," as serious manifestoes. Though you wouldn't know it by listening to Paul or reading his words, libertarians do have genuine ideas that conservatives might embrace.
The Revolution was a great book, though.
Genuine ideas like government transparency? Auditing the Fed, which all of the House Republicans (though certainly not all 'conservative') have cosponsored?
Sure, we're the delusional ones. :rolleyes:
Let's, for a moment, forget Paul (and how I wish this could be a permanent condition, considering the congressman is neither a serious politician nor -- and I can't stress this enough -- a serious thinker).
I'm not sure what a "serious politician" is. But not a "serious thinker"?
What does Harsanyi think of this video?
YouTube - The Philosophy of Liberty (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I)
Libertarianism offers conservatives -- many of them new to political activism -- an earnest ideological alternative to the process-heavy politics that dominate Washington.
No, it offers them a way to raise some serious campaign cash and get re-elected.
If only it stopped there. Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades. Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake.
(Un)fortunately, Harsanyi doesn't go into depth about his monetary policy complaint.
Also, he apparently hasn't seen Paul's CPAC speech this year, where he showed many examples of the traditional conservative foreign policy.
Although he writes for Reason.com (as a contributor, not a staffer), I guess he hasn't read the article about the newsletters:
http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter
Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
That was in the first paragraph.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Paul is that thousands of intellectually curious young people will have read his silly books, including "End the Fed," as serious manifestoes. Though you wouldn't know it by listening to Paul or reading his words, libertarians do have genuine ideas that conservatives might embrace.
The Revolution was a great book, though.
Genuine ideas like government transparency? Auditing the Fed, which all of the House Republicans (though certainly not all 'conservative') have cosponsored?
Sure, we're the delusional ones. :rolleyes: